Poems by Priscilla Frake
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Six O'clock News
by Priscilla Frake
From Canary Spring 2018
Priscilla lives within half a mile of the Brazos River in the Lower Brazos watershed about 45 miles from Galveston Bay.
The world is renaming itself:
Rising Bay. Shrinking Glacier.
Drowned Archipelago.
Meanwhile, I’m busy making stew,
chopping carrots (while there are carrots
to chop), caramelizing onions, adding bay leaves
and thyme as the news drones on
with snatches of disaster.
A new world:
Colony Collapse Disorder.
Umbilical wires tethering us
to a failing grid.
Tropical diseases swarming in
to northern latitudes.
I eat with the TV, then clear
the table, scour the soup pot,
put anxiety back
in its narrow drawer. I silence
the pundits with a click.
Sandblast of wind.
Spring accelerating.
Forests at flash point.
Hundred year storms
stacked up at the coast.
Incoming drought or flood.
I walk through the house
locking doors, securing
windows. I set the alarm,
then slip into the blackened acres
of incandescent dreams.
© Priscilla Frake